Lack of Something Vital
by Gigabomb
Summary: Siblings perceive their parents in different ways. This holds true even when you aren't human... and your mother doesn't technically exist. Clone triplets fic, from three different points of view.
1. No Words

Author's Note: First up, Loz POV.

Kadaj is quiet now; Loz knows it won't last long. It never does, these days. It used to, back at the beginning, when they first escaped from the labs. It was Kadaj who had led them to safety, who had stayed focused despite everything, who had avoided the distractions of the world beyond the labs long enough for them to find somewhere to hide and recover. The focus is still there, but most of the time, Kadaj isn't. When he looks into his younger brother's eyes at times like this, there isn't anything there, and Kadaj doesn't see him. All he sees is mother. Sometimes Loz thinks that's all Kadaj has ever seen. Sometimes, Loz hates mother, because mother is hurting Kadaj, and mothers shouldn't hurt their sons.

Kadaj has always heard mother the clearest. Loz hears her too, sometimes, but unlike Kadaj, he hears nothing he understands, and for once Loz doesn't mind his incomprehension. It is the words Kadaj understands that cause him pain. But sometimes for Loz there is… something. Something that hurts him like it hurts Kadaj, except while Kadaj feels it all the time, Loz just hears it when Kadaj isn't there, is somewhere where Loz and Yazoo can't follow. When he hates mother for taking Kadaj away, for hurting his younger brother, she hurts him too, and it is then he cries and hates mother a little more. But he doesn't tell. If Kadaj knew, he would hate Loz, and while Loz might not mind mother hating him most out of all her sons, he couldn't stand it if Kadaj hated him too.

Loz isn't sure if Yazoo hears mother, too. He might; Yazoo doesn't really talk much, but if he does hear her, he doesn't mention it, and Yazoo never cries or goes where Loz cannot follow, so Loz has no way of telling. Yazoo is gone now, has left to go find them something to eat. Loz wishes Yazoo had not left. Kadaj's fit started while Yazoo was gone, and Loz doesn't know what to do. Yazoo always does, always says the right thing that will calm down their younger brother and let him sleep, but Loz doesn't have the words.

Back at the labs, Loz was the best at what he did, was trained to be the best. But as Loz watched his youngest brother's eyes open and couldn't see anything there, he knew that what he's good at will never be as important as this. When Kadaj begins to thrash against the sheets, keening in his throat a sound that might be 'mother,' Loz tries to find the words that will finally allow his brother to rest, but he never had them to begin with. Loz wishes that Yazoo was here, but he isn't, so Loz does the best he could. He wraps his arms around Kadaj and tries to block out mother's voice from his brother's ears long enough to let Kadaj sleep. He says nothing, because anything he'd say wouldn't be the right thing. It never is. Kadaj quiets, but when Loz looks into his eyes, there still isn't anything there. Loz says nothing, but quietly, he hates mother a little more, because mothers shouldn't hurt their sons like Jenovah hurts his brother.


	2. No Meaning

Author's Note: Yazoo POV.

Yazoo hears their mother's voice. Sometimes he wishes he didn't, but most of the time he doesn't mind. If it hadn't been for their mother's voice, he would never have known that Kadaj and Loz were his brothers. If it wasn't for their mother's voice, Yazoo would be alone and would never have known the difference except by the empty places at his side.

The three of them had been designed as a unit from the start. Loz had the brute strength, Kadaj the personality driving them to succeed, and Yazoo himself had been created as nothing but the embodiment of cool, measured calculation. They were the different parts that made up the whole of something extremely dangerous, but Yazoo knew from listening to the scientists when they thought he couldn't hear, that the whole had once been one being, instead of three. Yazoo had at one time been curious about the person that they together had once been, but even if Loz and Kadaj were his brothers, they were not the same person, and Yazoo didn't want them to be. Even if that is what their mother wishes for, if that is why she makes Kadaj scream until his voice is hoarse and Loz cry silently in his sleep, Yazoo will not allow that to happen. He may not hate mother as he knows Loz does, no matter how much his elder brother tries to hide it, but Yazoo loves his brothers far more than he cares about Jenovah.

Yazoo hears their mother's voice, but not as clearly as Loz and Kadaj. To him, Jenovah is just a presence, a bodiless specter that most of the time he ignores. It is only when Kadaj starts to scream that Yazoo allows himself to listen, and then it is easy to find the words that allow his younger brother to cut off the voice shrieking in his mind. To him, the words are meaningless, but they mean something to Kadaj, and when Kadaj is in such pain that he can't see his brothers through his haze of madness no matter how hard he tries, what matters to Kadaj is all Yazoo cares about.

Now is such a time. Yazoo looks down at his brothers, Kadaj struggling against something only he can see and a barking, painful laugh making his body shake, Loz holding onto their younger brother as tightly as he can while sending Yazoo a wordless plea to say the words that he's never been able to find.

It is only for his brothers that Yazoo will do this thing, to listen to their mother's voice when the very sound of it in his mind makes him shudder from the strangeness. He listens, and what he hears means nothing. But as always, he says it anyway. "Don't worry, Kadaj. The Reunion will happen soon, and then mother will come back."

Yazoo watches at his younger brother relaxes, the green in his eyes retreating enough to let Kadaj to return to himself, to them. He watches as Kadaj finally drifts off to sleep.

As soon as he is sure that Kadaj is truly asleep, Loz turns to Yazoo. "The words you say. What do they mean?"

Yazoo gives a shake of his head. To him, the words are meaningless and always have been. But Yazoo had made a promise to himself the first time he had laid eyes upon his brothers and known what they were to him. As long as mother makes Kadaj scream until his voice is hoarse and Loz cry silently in his sleep, Yazoo will say anything that allows his brothers to come back to him, no matter the taste the lies leave behind.


	3. No Understanding

Author's Note: And finally, Kadaj POV.

Kadaj hears mother clearly. He always had, even in the labs where the white, sterilized walls had muffled everything else. He always would, because mother loves him, and will never let him be alone.

He hears his mother clearly, but he does not always understand her words. She tells him that he is her favorite among all her children, but she speaks frequently of another, and with more fondness than when she talks directly to him. She tells him of two older brothers, one loved and one who had betrayed her, but Loz and Yazoo, the only brothers Kadaj has ever known, are never mentioned. She talks about the prodigal son, but not of Kadaj's real brothers, as if they do not exist.

She tells him of things he must do. To escape from the lab, and it had been with a small amount of guilt that Kadaj freed his brothers on his way, though that had not been in his mother's instructions. To go to the city of Midgar, and wait. And finally, to find her, and free her from her captors, something Kadaj had not yet achieved. His mother speaks in abstract terms, and he finds it difficult to understand her directions to her location. She punishes him for his incomprehension, for not being good enough, not as good as… her eldest son. The one mother speaks of with such fondness. She comforts him afterwards, but as she tells him that he really is her favorite, the best of all her children, it pains Kadaj to know that his mother speaks lies.

It wouldn't bother him so much if he knew his mother is wrong, that in her lies there are truth, that he is the best. But he knows he is not. That he is simply a replacement, a poor substitute, and not what his mother really wants at all.

"Kadaj? Are you okay?"

Kadaj rolls over in the bed to meet Loz's worried eyes. He realizes with some surprise that there are tears running down his face. This is not like him. Only Loz in the past has cried in his sleep.

"Kadaj."

On his other side, Yazoo is awake as well. At this, Kadaj is not surprised. His brothers understand him. They know when something is wrong, even when Kadaj doesn't want them to. They know when it hurts, even when Kadaj barely recognizes it himself.

"Kadaj…" Loz, as always overly conscious of his superior strength, gingerly places a hand on Kadaj's cheek. "Is mother… is she…" _hurting you_ isn't said, but Kadaj knows.

Kadaj shakes his head. "No. But we're taking too long to find her." _I'm taking too long. It's my fault, not yours._

But such a subtle difference, between we and I and you with all of them being together so long, this Loz cannot understand, and he flinches at the perceived criticism in Kadaj's words. "I'm sorry, brother."

_You shouldn't be. You've done nothing wrong. _"I know." It isn't an acceptance. It isn't a rejection. It isn't anything, but the pain inside Kadaj is just a little too much for him to care.

Kadaj rolls back over and closes his eyes. This does not free him from his brothers, for they are in his mind almost as much as their mother is, but Yazoo's impartial gaze is much easier to take than Loz's hurt.

After a moment, both his brothers lie back down. Yazoo's breathing evens out almost immediately, but Loz's is unsteady for a long time before he, too, returns to sleep. Kadaj stays awake, staring blindly at the ceiling of their hideout, and wonders why he understands his brothers so easily, so completely, when his mother continues to evade him. Why his brothers know him, when his mother does not.


End file.
